Ethereum entered history by being an adaptable network, aware of impediments from lacking regulations and settled practices in the crypto industry. Since its development, Ethereum’s creator, Vitalik Buterin, envisioned more than a blockchain ―but a community where developers, investors, miners, and other network participants collaborate for their best interests.
Before Ethereum, users didn’t have much of an offer, so learning how to buy crypto currency would be limited to Bitcoin and other emerging altcoins.
But now, Ethereum has brought innovation to life by switching from PoW to PoS for more efficiency and establishing the Merge update to provide a sustainable blockchain. These are only part of the prominent update plan for Ethereum that’s yet to reach the final goal.
In the future, Ethereum has the potential to become the greatest blockchain solution by constantly adapting to market changes. Here’s how.
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A brief look at previous achievements
Since the beginning, Ethereum was supposed to be something more than Bitcoin by introducing smart contract functionalities. At the same time, the Ethereum blockchain provided a new vision for distributed and permissionless networks.
The ecosystem contains decentralized applications (dApps), decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, the Metaverse and the emergence of Web3. However, as tools and databases increased, scalability became threatened by energy consumption and transaction costs, making it difficult for newcomers to enter the system or for miners to continue their activity.
Hence, a development plan was introduced to mitigate most of these issues, proposing the Ethereum 2.0 version to implement sustainability, security, and scalability at the Ethereum’s fast development level.
Ethereum 2.0 and its current evolution
Finding innovation in this fast-paced industry isn’t that difficult, but implementing it poses numerous challenges due to a lack of regulation and standardization. Until now, Ethereum has completed a series of updates, such as the launch of the Beacon Chain in 2020, which settled the switch from PoW to PoS. This significant change enhanced the blockchain’s security and lowered energy requirements for scaling solutions to be implemented quickly.
In the following year, the Berlin and London upgrades were introduced to lower gas fees, followed by the Altair and Arrow Glacier upgrades. Numerous other updates continued until the most recent in 2023, the Shanghai update that handled staking, withdrawal, and ETH liquidity.
What the Ethereum roadmap has in sight for the future
The Ethereum roadmap has only started impacting the blockchain and community but has more to offer in the future. Briefly, here are the following major updates for Ethereum:
- The Surge will deal with rollups and data sharding;
- The Scourge will handle with decentralization;
- The Verge will check block verifying;
- The Purge will reduce computational requirements;
- The Splurge will operate all remaining issues;
The Ethereum roadmap might see an end in around ten years from now, as these updates need time to settle. When the Merge was released, the market was significantly affected, and it took some time for Ethereum to go back to its regular prices.
Danksharding might be the real game-changer
Danksharding will be the superior version of the current sharding through which transactions are processed, and the network benefits from increasing throughput. Sharding includes small networks parallel to each other through which gas fees can be reduced if they face the network’s scalability.
On the other hand, Danksharding will introduce the concept of horizontal database scaling to manage vast amounts of data through Layer-2 rollups. Managing data on Ethereum will now be distributed across blobs for enhanced scalability and low data storage costs.
There are various versions of Danksharding, including Proto-Danksharding and Full Danksharding. The first is the beginning of introducing this update to Ethereum through expansion of the transaction volume and increase the block size. This update will also handle temporary data blobs communicating with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)to enhance automation. The result will include reduced rollups closed for more affordable transactions.
On the other hand, full Danksharding will be the final version of this upgrade and is expected to take several years to complete. Until then, there will be more related updates here and there regarding scalability, Ethereum’s biggest issue.
Roadmap transitions included in the original plan
In a recent interview, Vitalik Buterin stated that the original Ethereum roadmap might suffer numerous changes as the years pass because the market changes and the blockchain will react differently to upcoming changes. A few revisions were already made for 2024’s roadmap execution, and it might be possible that the roadmap will be altered frequently to sustain fast changes.
While this might pose trust issues for users, changes from the initial plan are required for the roadmap to be genuinely efficient because something new happens every day, and no one knows when the market will crash, or miners will stop their activities. Moreover, external events can also affect the dynamic of Ethereum’s roadmap.
As part of the roadmap, Buterin announced that 2024 will be when the Single Slot Finality option (SSF) will evolve and provide irreversibility features to blockchain blocks. The upcoming stage, the Surge, will also suffer changes as it might help Ethereum reach 100,000 transactions per second with the help of rollups.
Centralization risks will also be addressed this year since they’ve deepened due to staking findings that only a few pools dominate the network. This is where the Scourge update comes to mitigate decentralization and security. Overall, Buterin wishes for Ethereum to be cyberpunk, meaning leveraging cryptography against abusive government regulation that currently happens as the SEC continues to fight against cryptocurrency. Therefore, 2024 will be important for companies and regular users, as they’ll have to adapt to several changes in how governments perceive crypto.
Final thoughts
Ethereum was one of the most interesting crypto projects, introducing smart contracts and ecosystems where developers can create numerous digital products. However, the blockchain got so condensed with users that it now has vast scalability issues, which are to be tackled with a series of further updates. The Ethereum roadmap is set to improve the network by lowering gas fees and mitigating centralization, but the blockchain will also be changed through Danksharding and other vital alterations.
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